Moravian Workbench Tail Vice

I’ve been working on a Moravian Workbench for almost two years now and this week I finally have a working tail vice on the bench with accompanying dog holes!!!

This is really exciting because the whole concept behind the Moravian workbench is to have a portable bench that you can take to the job site without compromising on any of the features you would want in a stationary bench. I still need to figure out a leg vice for this work bench, still, getting a working tail Vice in the shop is huge!!

In between other projects, I’ve been slowly chipping away at getting this thing built. Just getting the legs put together was a huge chore! It took a couple weeks of working on them for hours a day last summer to carefully join all of the pieces together for assembly. I finished them a little while prior to my Accident with the router table when I set the project aside to work on some Adirondack chairs, one of which I finished right before Christmas.

I had a machine shop put this assembly together for me. It consists of a 3/4” acme rod with the end cut to accommodate a handle. The carriage was made from a length of black pipe and two nuts welded together with a cross piece.

Pillow block bearings can be found at stores like Tractor Supply Company. After looking through every automotive store in town, we finally located some at a transmission shop that serviced tractors. I think they were worth the investment :0).

The bench was too thick to drill the holes all the way through with a Forsner bit, so I got out the trusty old brace and auger to finish up.

Since I didn’t want blow out on the top side of the bench, I drilled until I could feel the tip of the auger coming through the other side and then flipped the whole bench top over to finish drilling them.

After spending “forever” cleaning up the slot so everything operated smoothly, it was finally time to put the whole assembly together!

Vice is mounted!! The carriage runs smoothly in it’s slot. All that was left was to drill the dog holes. Which I did with this 3/4” brad point bit, which I cooled in a bucket of water between holes.

The tail Vice is a rather simple concept, you have a pipe moving along an acme rod that you insert bench dogs into. Then depending on how long your workpiece is, you use a bench dog in the corresponding hold and tighten the tail Vice. I used one when I visited The Wood and Shop in 2019 to take the intro to hand tools class and really loved how easy it was to clamp for planing.

It would be a great addition to any bench and rather easy to cobble together yourself. Happy building!

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